By contrast to the well-studied trawl fisheries, the level of interaction between seabirds and purse-seine fleets remains to be unknown. This type of fishery in Chile uses nets with a small mesh size and targets pelagic fish species at the surface of the water. The nets are set in a circle, forming the ‘purse’ before closing the ‘purse strings’ – a cable that runs through rings at the bottom of the net. The vessels haul the cable capturing the schooling fish in the purse and subsequently use of suction tube to transfer the fish into holding tanks.
We suspect that during the haul seabirds may become entangled in the netting as they dive down to take advantage of the trapped fish. During September we performed the first ever observations on these vessels to start exploratory monitoring of seabird interactions.
There is a lot to learn and we are currently developing the necessary onboard protocols to document any interactions. This is a great new challenge for the ATF and is extremely motivating!
Our first view of the fishery has revealed large numbers of seabirds attending the operation, especially pelicans which can be seen around the nets in the image below. Photo: Luis Cabezas.